Babies! (not mine), cycle 2, day 26

I should have seen it coming. I should have known. I should have emotionally prepared myself for *gulp* the baby shower. Dun, Dun, Dun!

I mean it when I say I’m totally thrilled for this soon-to-be-mama – I loved picking out baby books for her new arrival and celebrating with oh-dear-god-why-do-i-insist-on-being-sober-I’m-so-not-pregnant (virgin) bellinis. What I didn’t expect is that, duh, baby showers tend to also be full of the-already-born-variety of baby.

There. Were. Babies. Everywhere. A 17 month old dancing in circles like a drunken sailor, chanting “car, car, CARRRR!”; a two and a half year old covered in cupcake frosting; a three week old so tiny it did not appear to be able to open it’s eyes. And those were just the ones I saw. (In addition to the one who permanently attached herself to me and gnawed on my fingers for about two hours, every minute of which was kind of like heaven.)

To say I was green with envy isn’t entirely accurate – I don’t begrudge them their adorable snotty babbling babes or resent their fertility (because, um, that would be clinically insane and it’s also entirely possible that I was in the midst of babies-conceived-with-Clomid, a reality far more prevalent than I ever knew.). It’s more that I just, like, want one. Like, yesterday <naturally talk of babies lapses into, like, talking like a valley girl. That’s a thing, right? >.

We’ve always known we wanted kids – secret shame: C and I had a baby girl’s name picked out by our junior year in college – but I never really knew quite how much. There’s something totally intangible about this feeling – and lest you think I’m going down some ultra-weird-maternal-biological-impulse road, C has it too. We both get emotional thinking about how bad we want this – how bad I too want to suffer through nine months of unceasing nausea, how bad C wants to suffer through nine months of I’m-too-nauseous to look at you let alone have sex with you treatment. We’re just dying to sleep three hours a night, in 8-minute increments, and find that all of our clothes are covered in spit-up, snot or both (that’s basically parenthood in a nutshell, right?).

Anyway. One emotional rollercoaster of a baby shower later and here I am, at home. Mindlessly perusing pictures of baby rooms on Apartment Therapy ("Emerson's Vintage Nursery"; "Juniper's Whimsical Abode" - seriously, I could not make this stuff up) because, err, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Okay fine, so I probably need better distractions – this, this and rigorous house cleaning (why yes, I will vacuum the baseboards!) should suffice, for now. Only *cough* 72 hours until we find out whether this cycle worked…